Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia) (17:20): I have enjoyed listening to the debate thus far. I haven't pointed this out before, but 'back on track' is an interesting slogan. It was a slogan for the team of the ultramilitant Builders Labourers Federation ticket in the 1980s and the 1990s within the current construction union. It was an interesting ticket and an interesting idea. Some of the themes that sit behind Mr Dutton and 'back on track' sound like the same things that I used to listen to in the building industry from these unreconstructed Trotskyites. There was a very similar sentimentality about the moribund, shonky leadership that there had been before, which is exactly what we're seeing from Mr Morrison's leftovers in the Liberal Party today. They just want to get back on track to where Scott Morrison had the show, where government efficiency was billions and billions of dollars out the door. At the Department of Veterans' Affairs—some of the senators here were with me in Senate estimates where you'd hear of billions and billions of dollars going to shonky labour hire contractors in Veterans' Affairs. No work ever got done. People's friends were enriched in the process. No work ever got done. Waiting times blew out. There were 45,000 veterans—the people who we should be looking after—just waiting for their claims to be assessed. The minister was just sitting on his hands. Bureaucracy was stuck because it was not focused on its job. We've come into government and fixed Veterans' Affairs. What do we hear from these characters? They want to get back on track, back to sacking all of the public servants who've been engaged and employed in country towns and regional centres all over Australia, helping veterans get the services that they need. Why would you want to go back to the Morrison show, where Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, was a sort of leading light and second-string character on the policy front? Why would you want to get back on track to that? It was a road to ruin that we had when Labor took government in 2022. The country was in diabolical trouble. Inflation was higher than six per cent, and it was going up. I agree with some of what Senator Rennick said—some of it, Senator Rennick. Senator Rennick: That's better than usual! Senator AYRES: It's better than usual, and I'm being kind because we're heading towards the end of the parliamentary term and I've enjoyed your contributions over the years. There's plenty of time, but I get the sense that time goes on, and you get a sense of history about these things. One of the reasons that the inflation challenge has been tough for Australia is that it came off the back of a trillion dollars in debt with nothing to show for it from the Morrison government. It was a trillion dollars in debt with nothing to show for it. There was no infrastructure, nothing. Secondly, there had been a decade of the lowest ever productivity growth on record. Admittedly, it was sitting against the back of a decade before it that wasn't too flash either. Energy policy was in tatters. Amongst the investment community around the world, Australia was a laughing stock on energy policy. We'd managed to construct an energy policy where four gigawatts of electricity generation were decommissioned and only one gigawatt of generation was introduced. It was a debacle. And everybody wonders why electricity prices have had it tougher from inflationary impacts than everybody would have hoped for. Well, that's what happens when you've got low productivity and you don't build generation capacity. It's cactus. There's a lot of work to do. I don't agree with Senator Rennick's prescriptions for how we deal with these challenges, but I do like his sense of urgency, and I do like the fact that he makes the argument. There was inflation with a six in front of it; $1 trillion in debt and nothing to show for it and real wages in long-term stagnation. These characters over here pray for real wages to decline. When they were in government, they loved it because it was a design feature of their system. When they're in opposition, they want them to fall so they can make a political point. There are only two things that make these characters smile: (1) when real wages decline and people are impoverished, and they just hope that they can make a political point out of it; and (2), when they're pulling the wings off flies. Misery loves company—well, there they are. If something goes wrong, there's johnny-on-the-spot trying to make the point, the partisanship, instead of focusing on the things that can actually be done to make it better. Here we are with inflation a third of what it was and falling. Real wages are rising. Living standards are rising. The lowest average unemployment rate of any— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Senator Smith, a point of order? Senator Dean Smith: That is not true. Living standards have fallen. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: That is a debating point, not a point of order. A real point of order, Senator Scarr? Senator Scarr: Actually, I was going to take a point of order. I didn't think that was a legitimate point of order. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you very much for the clarification. We are in firm agreement. Back to you, Minister. Senator AYRES: This is exactly what Senator Rennick was complaining about. Senator Scarr: Humour? Senator AYRES: Sometimes I wonder! We have the lowest average unemployment rate of any government over the last 50 years—1.1 million new jobs, and the fact is that half of the jobs are for women. Interestingly, these characters over here don't really like that very much, either. They complain that many of these jobs are in the private sector but are about looking after people. They don't like that, either. While I'm interested in Senator Rennick's broader philosophical argument, the people of Australia are confronted with a pretty stark choice this year. We saw it on Sunday on the Insiders program, didn't we? These characters over here and in the other place say that there's $350 billion worth of additional spending. They say that our vision for the economy—a soft landing where unemployment stays low, where people are in jobs, where wages are rising, where living standards are rising, and where people are earning more and keeping more of what they earn—is a bad thing and not their prescription. Their prescription is the old economics 101 one—they never got to second year, let alone third year—which is cut, cut, cut. You cut public services and you cut expenditure to socially useful things because you want to create unemployment, create misery and drive the economy over a cliff. That is the alternative vision. We saw it from Mr Dutton. He said there will be cuts, but they won't tell you what they will be until after the election. Australians aren't dumb. They are not mugs. They are not going to be taken for mugs. What that is is a prescription for the old Abbott routine. Remember, Mr Abbott said, 'There won't be any cuts,' and then, in 2014, he delivered the most savage budget, with cuts to Medicare, cuts to the ABC and cuts to public services—cuts for all sorts of things that mattered for ordinary people. Well, this will be that on steroids, because Mr Dutton's told Australians that the cuts will come after the election, and they certainly will. Debate interrupted.